Various occupations place people in precarious positions at relatively dangerous heights thereby creating a need for fall protection or fall-arresting safety apparatus. Among other things, such apparatus usually include a safety line interconnected between a support structure and a safety harness donned by a person working in proximity to the support structure.
Commonly used safety harnesses include flexible webbing that extends over the user's shoulders and a considerable amount of weight from the safety harness, tools, and other equipment connected to the safety harness is applied to the user's shoulders. Harnesses that include a tool belt with an adjustment element do reduce the loads associated with tools connected to the tool belt but do not aid in supporting the weight of the upper portion of the harness or auxiliary equipment that may be attached to the dorsal D-ring of the harness. Therefore, some disadvantages of these types of harnesses are loads applied to the user's shoulders causes discomfort, which can lead to fatigue; tension in the shoulder straps causes the chest strap and other components above the dorsal D-ring to move upward, which requires unnecessary readjustment; and the dorsal D-ring is prone to sliding downward on the user's back and out of proper adjustment due to the weight of personal self-retracting lifelines (SRLs), energy absorbing lanyards, restraint lanyards, and other fall protection equipment.
For the reasons stated above and for other reasons stated below, which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for an improved safety harness with a weight distribution assembly.